Tewksbury motel feels fed heat, but more drug arrests nearby

TEWKSBURY -- In 2005, it was home to a meth lab. It's been the site of numerous drug busts, including one, referenced in a 2009 affidavit, where police reported seizing 190 baggies of heroin.

The Motel Caswell is now the subject of a high-profile federal forfeiture trial. The government is working to take the property, which it claims facilitates drug trafficking.

A review of Police Department arrest logs from 2007 through 2012 shows that despite a relatively high number of drug arrests at the Motel Caswell property in recent years, more suspects have been busted on drug-related charges at nearby addresses.

During the examined six-year time period, police made 19 drug arrests at the Motel Caswell at 450 Main St., five fewer than at the property where Walmart is located at 333 Main St. Twenty-six drug arrests were made at each of the properties located at 85 Main St. and 95 Main St.

The arrest logs do not indicate if an arrest took place inside a business or elsewhere on the property, like on the fringe of a parking lot. Not all entries list the business or location name along with the address where the arrest took place. For example, the address of 85 Main St. is shared by Home Depot, Applebee's and a Burger King, with a large parking lot. Of the 26 arrests there, 14 were listed as occurring at Home Depot, and 5 each at Applebee's and Burger King, with the remaining two not specifying the precise location.

Route 38's other budget motel, the Motel 6, is at 95 Main St.

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, along with an IHOP restaurant. Four of the 26 drug arrests at that address were listed as taking place at IHOP, with 22 at the Motel 6.

Regardless of where on the property the arrests took place, three addresses in town have seen more drug arrests than the Motel Caswell in the last six years. And yet the Motel Caswell is being prosecuted by the federal government for being a drug-arrest magnet.

"It belies this notion that the area's great and there's this one problem property, the Motel Caswell," said attorney Scott Bullock from the Institute for Justice, the Arlington, Va.-based libertarian law firm representing motel owner Russ Caswell. "That's not the case at all.

Bullock said that when the Institute for Justice first took on the Motel Caswell case in 2011, the team examined police logs and found the rate of arrests at the motel comparable to that of its neighbors. He said more recent statistics obtained by The Sun seem in line with those initial findings.

The numbers raise the question of why this one business was targeted under the seizure laws, Bullock said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

The trial took place in November, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith Dein has not yet issued a ruling. If she finds against the Motel Caswell, the property would be sold, with the proceeds split between federal government and the Tewksbury Police Department.

In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sonya Rao described the property as dangerous, and said she would prove Caswell either knew of the offenses taking place there or was "willfully blind" to them.

During the trial, Dein asked attorneys where the line was. If a drug transaction takes place in a shop's parking lot, she queried, does the store then become subject to forfeiture?

"This is a problem that is common in parking lots of big box retail stores and in other budget motels," Bullock said Friday. "There's drug problems and issues that go on all over, especially in that area. It's high traffic and it's by the interstate."

At hotels, drug crime and other illegal activity can be harder to detect, taking place "entirely behind closed doors," Bullock said.

Including the 41 drug-related arrests, police made 500 arrests at Motel 6 and the Motel Caswell from 2007 through 2012. Of those, 303 were at Motel 6 and 197 at the Motel Caswell. These totals include 38 individuals taken into protective custody for drunkenness from Motel 6 and 36 from the Motel Caswell.

The town's other five hotels, all located near the Andover line, saw a total of 66 arrests during this same time period, with 22 at Extended Stay America, 16 at the Holiday Inn, 13 at the Residence Inn, eight at the Fairfield Inn and seven at TownePlace Suites. Out of the 66 arrests, 13 were labeled "protective custody."

No one has been arrested on drug charges at either the Fairfield Inn or TownePlace Suites in the last six years.

How arrest figures were compiled

The figures used here come from six years of arrest logs (2007 to 2012) posted by the Tewksbury Police Department on the town website and made publicly available for download. Full incident logs are also available online, but The Sun's analysis focused on arrests.

From there, a database was created, breaking down drug-related arrests by year, charge and the address and business where police responded. The offenses that were considered include possession, distribution or trafficking of any drug, operating under the influence of drugs, falsifying prescriptions, being present where heroin is kept and conspiracy to violate drug law.

Hotel arrests were tallied in a spreadsheet based on arrest log entries that gave name or address of the hotel as a location. If a hotel shares an address with another business, the totals include only arrests specifically indicating the hotel.

The logs do not distinguish if an arrest made at a hotel or other business took place inside the establishment or outside, but still on the property.

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